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Palin Rage Syndrome: Contagion spreading from the Left to the GOP?

Democrats are expected to exhibit the symptoms of Palin Rage Syndrome. As conservatives, we battle the disease quite effectively when it rears its ugly head on the other side of the aisle. For example, when Richard Cohen of the Washington Post penned a transparently unabashed snowjob hit piece on ex-governor Sarah Palin, it was swiftly met with a two-by-four to the face by Lori Ziganto.

Faced with the prospect of a President Sarah Palin, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, the Republican party’s darling from another coast, shook his head and rolled his eyes.

“I don’t know, but it’s an amazing world,” he said to Jimmy Fallon during a taping of Tuesday’s Late Night show.

This really pisses me off. What is so funny / strange / ridiculous / eyeroll about a potential Palin presidency? The woman has at least as much experience as our current organizer-in-chief. As Jedediah Bila points out in response to Charen’s criticisms, if you take a fair and unbiased look at Palin’s record, she is quite accomplished in both her public service and private careers:

As Governor, Sarah Palin actualized AGIA, the Alaska Gasline Inducement Act, the largest private sector infrastructure project in North American history. Palin’s administration opened up drilling for oil and gas at Point Thomson for the first time in several decades. As Governor, Palin reduced earmark requests for Alaska by 80%, established Alaska’s Petroleum Integrity Office to oversee safe energy development, placed the state checkbook online, and reduced spending for Fiscal Year 2010 by over one billion dollars from Governor Murkowski’s Fiscal Year 2007 budget. Palin signed ACES, Alaska’s Clear and Equitable Share bill, into law, incentivizing development and ensuring that Alaskans would receive a “clear and equitable” share of oil profits. She cut costs by selling a private jet purchased by the previous governor and saying “no thank you” to the Executive Mansion’s personal chef. She has served as Chairperson of the AK Oil and Gas Conservation Commission and Vice Chair of the National Governors Association Natural Resource Committee. Prior to her time as Governor, Palin served as Mayor of Wasilla, AK, and city council member in Wasilla. She has also been involved in running a commercial fishing business with her husband Todd.

Republicans are simply falling for an Alinsky-style liberal meme that is becoming more and more accepted as it is reinforced through repetition by more and more credible sources. Chris Christie should be ashamed.

As I look at the potential lineup for the 2012 presidential election, I can’t identify anybody who I’d prefer to vote for over Sarah Palin. Nobody. Sure, many of the potential candidates would be acceptable. For example, I love Huck for his folksy style and his unapologetic Christianity, as well as his support for the FairTax. I’m sure that if elected, Romney will turn out to be whatever the tea party wants him to be (he’s cool like that, ya know?). I doubt that Gingrich would ever have the opportunity or support to pass any further expansions to the welfare state.

But none of these candidates feel, at a gut instinct level, like the right choice to challenge and ultimately replace Barack Obama at this point in history. At least, not to me. Each one of them has something specific as well as something intangible about them that just doesn’t feel right. With Daniels, it is his statement in support of a VAT, reported here and here, that does him in. As for Thune, he is totally shady on the earmark issue; a deal-breaker for many, including me. Who is left?

And yet it is so easy to dish out the throw-away lines eagerly provided by the Left: she’s “unqualified” “crazy” “dangerous” “nutty.” But she isn’t, really, it’s just that we know that this is how the Left will attempt to portray her in an election against Barack Obama – we know this because they did it in 2008. So instead of standing by our champion, many are casting her to the wolves. She is being unfairly attacked with the Left’s own rhetoric by Republicans and even conservatives. I would like to emphasize unfairly, as in, these people are distorting the facts or drawing unsupported or illogical conclusions.

I can’t help but take it personally. And why is that? It is because Sarah Palin is the real deal: I see in her a reflection of my own values. And not just the values, but also the way she speaks about them and communicates her worldview. Palin sees the same ridiculousness in the world of the ‘elites’ that many average Americans see – and she isn’t afraid to point it out in plain-spoken ordinary English.

The more I see and hear Republicans taking cheap shots at Palin, the more angry I get. I don’t mind if you would rather support Tim Pawlenty (yawn) or Mitch Daniels or whoever else might be running in 2012. Go ahead; that’s what primaries are all about. Just don’t tear Palin down with cheap, underhanded, and unfair attacks.

Personally, I want to see her run. Despite what the polls show today, almost two years out from the election, I believe that she not only can defeat Obama, but I think the result would be inevitable. Sarah Palin is a breath of fresh air among a slate of mostly boring, ho-hum GOP candidates expected to run in 2012.

Right now, there is nobody on my radar I’d rather vote for – or, perhaps even more importantly, volunteer to work tirelessly to elect.